easyJet’s gender pay and our Amy Johnson Flying Initiative

14.04.2018

You may have seen the recent media reports about easyJet’s gender pay gap. We recognise that the headline statistics may appear concerning, so we wanted to explain the reality of gender pay at easyJet.

The overall gender pay gap figure at easyJet is over 50%, but this gives a false impression.

This is driven not by unequal pay for women at easyJet but by the massive gender imbalance in our and aviation’s pilot community. Like all airlines pilots make up a large proportion of easyJet’s employees, they are paid more highly than our other communities and, most materially, 94% of them are male.

This is not about unequal pay. easyJet’s pilots (and cabin crew) salaries and other pay is collectively agreed and negotiated with the trade unions, which means that the pay rates are exactly the same for men and women.

This gender imbalance is an issue for the whole aviation industry. Around 4% of commercial pilots worldwide are female and until recently you could fit every female Captain in the world on one Airbus A380 aircraft. easyJet does better than the industry as a whole at 5% and easyJet’s progressive culture has enabled female pilots to progress more easily than at other airlines. In fact, over a third of easyJet’s female pilots are already Captains.

But we recognise we need to do better. That is why three years ago easyJet launched our Amy Johnson Initiative to encourage more women to enter the pilot profession. We set a target that 20% of new pilots should be female by 2020, up from 6% in 2015.

Last year we recruited 49 female new entrant co-pilots. That’s a 48% increase on the previous year and takes the proportion of easyJet new entrant female pilots to 13%. This is a great achievement given the deep seated view in society that being a pilot is a male job and means the airline is on track to meet our 2020 target.

We believe that no other airline globally is doing more to encourage women to become pilots than easyJet and we hope this provides reassurance of our commitment to equal pay and equal opportunities for women

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